As activity related to the provision of information has increased and
become more complex in recent decades, the role of the intermediary between
the information
producer and the information user has similarly become more
complex and specialized. The referee, the journal editor, the abstracting and
indexing service, the publisher, the bookstore owner and the librarian are all
examples of educated intermediaries who have a significant impact on the
quantity and kinds of information resources available to the user. This paper
will consider the activities of two
types of intermediaries in one of the newer
and more complex information delivery processes: the
computerized bibli-
ographic search.
Initially, I shall discuss a new role for a traditional intermediary the
reference librarian. Later, I shall describe and evaluate an
attempt to define an
organizational intermediary, of which the Northeast Academic Science Infor-
mation Center (NASIC) is a
prototype, developed specifically in response to
this new information service. While this discussion
emphasizes the delivery of
machine-readable services in the academic
community, most of the comments
are
equally applicable to the special library and public library communities.

Issue Date:

1975

Publisher:

Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Citation Info:

In The use of computers in literature searching and related reference activities in libraries : papers presented at the 1975 Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, April 27-30, 1975, ed. F.W. Lancaster. Urbana, Il: Graduate School of Library Science: 78-90.